Entertainment

WikiLeaks Wins Battle Against Visa, MasterCard

WikiLeaks won an important legal battle against Visa and MasterCard in Iceland on Thursday — where the credit card companies' local partner was ordered by a judge to resume processing credit card donations made to the controversial secret-sharing site.

The Icelandic court ruled that Valitor, Visa and MasterCard's local partner, ran afoul of contract laws when it stopped processing donations to WikiLeaks, according to the Associated Press.

Visa and MasterCard, along with other U.S.-based financial firms such as PayPal, blocked transactions headed for WikiLeaks in 2010 after the website published more than 250,000 American classified diplomatic cables.

"This is a significant victory against Washington's attempt to silence WikiLeaks," reads a statement posted by WikiLeaks and attributed to founder Julian Assange. "We will not be silenced. Economic censorship is censorship. It is wrong. When it's done outside of the rule of law its doubly wrong.

"One by one those involved in the attempted censorship of WikiLeaks will find themselves on the wrong side of history."

WikiLeaks also claimed to have suffered a 95% drop in revenue since the financial embargo began.

Valitor must restore service to WikiLeaks within two weeks or face fines of about $6,000 every day. The company is planning to appeal the decision.

Assange requested political asylum from Ecuador after losing his appeal against extradition from the U.K. to Sweden last month. He's wanted by Swedish authorities to answer for accusations of sexual misconduct, but says he believes Sweden would send him to the United States to be tried for crimes related to WikiLeaks releases.

The United States has not publicly charged Assange with any crime.

Julian Assange: His History and Story

Julian Assange

Julian Assange, 40, is an Australian-born political activist and journalist known for his controversial website WikiLeaks, which has published leaked documents that allege government and corporate misconduct. Assange fell into his career path after he was a hacker-activist in his early days.

Photo courtesy Wikimedia

Exposing the Government

From publishing material about extrajudicial killings in Kenya to toxic waste dumping in Côte d'Ivoire, Assange has long sought to bring controversial concepts to the forefront. On 28 November 2010, WikiLeaks and its five international print media partners (Der Spiegel, The New York Times, Le Monde, The Guardian and El País) began publishing U.S. diplomatic cables.

Beyond WikiLeaks

In addition to controversy surrounding the published documents in 2010, Assange's personal life became the center of a media uproar when he was arrested and taken into custody amid sex crime allegations. He remains a subject of a grand jury investigation in the U.S. and awaits the ruling of Britain’s Supreme Court regarding the possibility of extradition to Sweden.

Free Julian Assange Protests

The self-described “protector of victims” continues to fight extradition to Sweden before Britain’s Supreme Court. The appeal is Assange’s latest move to avoid being sent to Sweden to answer allegations of sexual crimes.

The World Tomorrow

Although Assange is under house arrest, he has hardly stayed out of the public eye. He recently completed filming episodes for his upcoming reality TV show "The World Tomorrow," which will air on Tuesday, April 17 on the Russia Today (RT) network. It was filmed over the past two months at his temporary home in England. The focus is a series of conversations with "some of the most interesting and controversial people alive in the world today."

In the Public

Court appearances and his new series aren't the only times the public has seen Assange recently. He played himself in the 500th episode of The Simpsons in February by recording his lines while under house arrest and was directed remotely. He also recently announced plans to run for a seat in the Australian Senate.

Assange, The Movie

Actor Anthony LaPaglia is expected play a detective tracking a young Assange in an upcoming film that focuses on his early days involved with Internet hacking. In the made-for-TV movie called Underground produced by Australian TV station Network Ten and set for global distribution through NBCUniversal, Assange will be played by film newcomer Alex Williams.

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